Kathmandu is fighting a parallel battle alongside its rescue operations: a flood of fake, recycled and AI-generated visuals that have swamped social media in the wake of the devastating flash floods that struck Nepal.
The Nepal Press Council, the country's media regulatory body, has ordered 72 social media users to pull down inappropriate content posted over the past few days. Council Chairman Umesh Shrestha said the complaints portal, opened specifically for the Bhotekoshi incident, had already received 101 complaints by 5 pm on Saturday. Of those, 67 were against personal accounts that had posted gruesome visuals.
"Similarly, complaints have been lodged against some online news portals and their social media pages," Shrestha said, adding that mainstream media organisations had largely avoided publishing misleading information and excessively graphic visuals.
The council has set up a dedicated portal titled "Special Complaints on the Bhotekoshi Incident" through which the public can flag misinformation and graphic material, according to a report in The Kathmandu Post.
Fact-checkers have found that several widely circulated videos and images are from disasters in other countries, recycled from earlier events, or generated and manipulated using artificial intelligence. While some footage is genuine, the rapid spread of misleading content has made an already chaotic information environment even harder to manage, especially for families desperately searching for missing relatives.
For social media users chasing views and virality, the tragedy has also become a source of lucrative content, drawing sharp concern from authorities, journalists and fact-checkers alike.
The government's Social Media Regulation and Management Committee, tasked with addressing graphic content, AI-generated misinformation, fake QR codes and other forms of online deception, has begun discussions with social media platforms to bring the situation under control.
